Recently Completed Games
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Combat is great fun, at times it can get a bit much but it is never unfair. Stealth is extremely hit and miss for me. I'd spend donkeys planning to clear a room and get spotted due to some cheesy shit that wasn't my fault. For a game that really focuses on melee combat, there are an awful lot of guys with guns too which I found at times annoying. But again, it never gives you a situation that can't be handled with a bit of forethought so it isn't a disaster.

Very solid game and I'm not usually a massive fan of melee oriented games so I'm surprised I enjoyed it this much. I'll definitely have a go at the New Game+ and seek out Arkham Asylum, which I missed out on.

This was my first Lego game and I really enjoyed it. However I wonder if I've approached it the wrong way. I stormed through the storyline without going back through each level in free play to get all the collectibles (or as many as I could). So now, I've completed the story but have lots of stuff still to collect, however, when/where am I going to use it??

Unless I'm completely missing something it seems a bit pointless to put in lots of extra collectible weapons and items if you don't actually need any of them to complete the game. Maybe I'm too used to Metroid/Zelda where the extra items are essential, even if only for one particular section.

I think if I'd played through the game a different way I'd get more out of it.7/10

Yeah it's fucking old but I have been meaning to complete this game for a long time! And you know what - it's a damn solid shooter. Gave me the spooks as well, in fact I shat it a few times. More so than Dead Space 1.
Even the end wasn't too cheesy. Looking forward to 2 and 3 but will probably play Dead Island or Bioshock 2 next.

+
Graphics. Held up reasonably well too considering it's 7/8yrs old.
Story.
Use of slo-mo. Made it fairly easy but not too easy.

Yeah it's fucking old but I have been meaning to complete this game for a long time! And you know what - it's a damn solid shooter. Gave me the spooks as well, in fact I shat it a few times. More so than Dead Space 1.
Even the end wasn't too cheesy. Looking forward to 2 and 3 but will probably play Dead Island or Bioshock 2 next.

+
Graphics. Held up reasonably well too considering it's 7/8yrs old.
Story.
Use of slo-mo. Made it fairly easy but not too easy.

-
clipping - Me being picky
very linear - Corridor after corridor

8.5/10

I fucking love F.E.A.R. One of my most favourite games. Played through it a few months ago and loved it all over again. I had never played the sequels and bought them. Played through the second which to be honest I didn't think would give me the same scares, boy was I wrong, some truly shit your pants moments. Brilliant game as well though doesn't quite manage the same sense of dread and claustrophobia the first did.

The third is on my shelf to be started soon.

I hope you like dead island, another one of my best games ever (see above), not without it's flaws but if you can put them aside you'll love it.

Yeah, great game. Very frustrating when you're used to FPS enemies running about, begging to be shot, and then you come up against those buggers covering eachother, using grenades to flush you out and move up.

When you realise that you've really got to take care and think (as well as shoot) your way out of each encounter, you find yourself appreciating those look-a-like encounters a bit more. Very satisfying. It's a FPS Frozen Synapse.

Dead Space 2. Fantastic action game but almost ruined by the end fight. Was it just me or did they suddenly ramp up the difficulty just for that? It was all going so well until then. I had to knock the difficulty down a notch; I hate doing that, the sense of failure overwhelms me. Sad I know. 8/10

Very frustrating game to review. The world is 10/10. The bad guy is 10/10. Gameplay is 10/10. Hunting, crafting, the first 6 hours of play, climbing towers (it harks back to the first Assassins Creed where climbing is actually fun and a puzzle) and best of all each location to capture is awesome, with the freedom to go in guns blazing, stealth it, melee it, snipe it from miles away or even just free a tiger and watch the fun.

But the problem is after 6 hours nothing has changed. It's the same 5 mission types (brilliant missions admitadly) repeated over and over again.

And the main missions are shit, every single one (and I do mean every one) is "do something, get captured / shot, escape." And the gameplay in these is 4/10.

In the end it is a 8/10 game, which is depressing as all the pieces are there for a 10/10 classic, but the repitition in the end and the lacklustre main missions really let it all down.

Haven't played a call of duty since the originals on the pc, and finally gave in to see what the fuss was about. Depressingly they have dropped World War Two as a setting, and gone with future stuff in this one, but surprisingly I really enjoyed this. The gameplay is polished to an incredible amount, and some of the set pieces are fantastic. I did like the branching storyline as well.

A solid 9/10

The multiplayer I am still undecided on. It is fun, but the maps and teams are tiny, it's no battlefield for sure. Tactics don't matter, there are no proper objectives and I miss the scale of the better mp games on the pc. Saying that it is rather addictive so the juy is still out.

The fifth Layton game and first on the 3DS is comfortably familiar yet a big step forward from the previous entries. One of the only games where 3D actually enhances the game.

Always an entertaining story, although the "twist" was laughably predictable within the first ten minutes.

Majority of the puzzles are excellent, although as always there are one or two where the solution is completely stupid and you'd never get it until you've guessed at it numerous times. Few and far between though so not too much of a problem.

The "daily puzzle" feature is back and as good as ever, certainly the overall package gives you value for your money.

8/10

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (PS3)

Only got around to playing Uncharted 2 just before Christmas which I gave 10/10 (as a lot of people did obviously!) as it was superb.

Had heard that the third game was great but not quite as good as the second but I actually had even more fun with this one. A couple of difficulty spikes as usual but otherwise a great game.

I assume with The Last of Us and how Naughty Dog have operated with Crash Bandicoot and Jak, this is the last one they'll make which is a huge shame - story, characters and gameplay are brilliant but at least if it is the last one, they've gone out at the top.

Just finished Assassins Creed 3 and I'm not really sure what to make of the experience, there's just so much game there and I should enjoy it, I certainly have the time to play through it thoroughly but my compulsion to follow up all the little side quests was non-existent.

I never really understood the point of trying to gain money through trading, I picked up a few new weapons along the way that were paid for with the odd pile of gold I found in a chest. But, apart from those weapons there seemed to be little benefit to following all the little threads doing the other stuff. I'm usually something of a completest but AC3 didn't inspire me to do so, I quickly tired of hunting and the stuff out in the wilderness. The towns were even worse for lacking interest for me. Perhaps if I'd really tried with those elements I would have enjoyed them and the game a little more.

I have recently been showing a distinct lack of interest in the open world gaming as if it isn't done just right then I find it tiresome, I really need something to engage me these days.

Onto other stuff: I found the combat to be pretty dull, they have improved it a bit but it still felt pretty boring and the only real alternation from mashing X was to occasionally press A to break the defense. It was pretty far from something like the Batman games, even if those can be pretty much a set of QTEs (as UncleLou quite rightly said recently) there's still a lovely flow that AC3 lacked.

Furthermore, the story was pretty dull, Haytham was an excellent character full of wit and an interesting swagger, Connor, however, was irritating and self-righteous. The relationship between those two was one of the better aspects but it can't make up for the otherwise pedestrian writing and characterisation. There were some highlights to the story, I actually enjoyed tooling around as Desmond, for a change. The climb Desmond does reasonably early on was one of the better parts of the game.

I'm not sure if the game was at fault for my ambivalence towards it or if I'm just not that interested in this sort of thing anymore.

Glad it wasn't just me then. I have a feeling it could be dependent on the weapons you have as some seemed to be pretty ineffective. I couldn't be arsed to backtrack to the last store past all the necromorphs again, especially that annoying regenerating one.

Alan Wakes' American Nightmare. Really enjoyed it even if it had some major faults in that it still feels like a tired 4-5 year old game with a new engine.

I think overall I love the atmosphere in Alan Wake. The enemies are mostly challenging and the gameplay is fantastic. My main gripe with the series is that the missions are a bit boring and a lot of hand holding.

@Cadence Yeah, I had to reload an old save and re-equip before the end boss fight. Your set-up makes a huge difference as to how hard the end fight is. Personally, I loved Dead Space 2 but preferred the original.

Anyway, talking of survival horror...

The Walking Dead

Not really sure what all the fuss is about with this one. As an example of story-telling and how to write a video game, it is exceptional. But as an example of an actual game... well it's good but nothing amazing at all.

It's poorly designed. It doesn't run well (I played it on a Mac). The graphics - even taking into account the decision to replicate the style of the comic books (which was a no-brainer) - are poor.

The only reason people are getting excited about this, as far as I can tell, is because it is brilliantly written and actually takes account of your decisions so that it makes them all matter. It's as if somebody played through the Mass Effect trilogy and thought "For Christ's sake, it's not hard. Look, I'll show you..."

But, as a writer, this is something that I've been waiting to happen for years. I'm just amazed it has taken this long for someone to get it right.

Now we just need developers to combine the two with gameplay that isn't just half-arsed puzzle solving/QTEs and we've cracked it.

Anyway, in a nutshell: If you haven't played it, you should - just don't get swept up by all the hype.

Cadence wrote:
Glad it wasn't just me then. I have a feeling it could be dependent on the weapons you have as some seemed to be pretty ineffective. I couldn't be arsed to backtrack to the last store past all the necromorphs again, especially that annoying regenerating one.

Yeh I think a lot depends on which weapons you use. I know I made it extremely difficult for myself. Worse than that, when I finally did beat it, I accidently cancelled the game save; so I have to do the whole soddin' fight again if I want to do a new game+. Unsuprisingly, I never have gone back...